Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this slow-moving, arty, somewhat abstract film, isn't likely to hold kids' attention (though many teens may want to see it because of star Sarah Michelle Gellar). Though trailers suggest that it's a horror movie, it's really more of an exploration of a trauma. It follows a young woman's struggle with violent, literally dark memories. These include a man's fatal assault on a woman, a car accident, and aggressive behavior by a creepy ex-boyfriend/co-worker. Violence (and one sex scene) tends to appear subjectively, which makes it hard to read. Characters are generally mean-spirited, depressed, and cryptic. Some drinking, a couple of jump scenes, menacing men chasing girls and women, and fairly mild language.
Families can talk about the nature of memories and how they affect us later in life. How could Joanna's father help her? Would it have helped if he'd talked to her (either as a child or as an adult)? How do Joanna's dreams engulf her life? How is her cutting herself a "cry for help"? How does the film suggest that she's providing some sort of "revenge" for the original murder victim? Is this revenge satisfying? Why or why not?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Moody, impressionistic, and bleak, THE RETURN explores supernatural links between two women who never knew each other. Until the end, when it actually explains too much, the film maintains a certain mystery, only gradually revealing the ways that Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is troubled by violent visions she can't explain.
They begin when Joanna is about about 10 years old (and played by Darrian McClanahan). She's riding in the back of her father Ed's (Sam Shepard) car when they're hit by another vehicle. Since then, Joanna has had nightmares (rendered in blurry, dismal fragments), sometimes unreadable, but always violent.
Trying to keep safe, she works as salesperson for a trucking company, always on the road or in hotel rooms. Her friend Michelle (Kate Beahan) worries about her, and Joanna is looking rather gaunt and hollow-eyed. But she's restless. "Sometimes," she says, "I think that if I keep moving forward, nothing bad will happen to me."
Joanna's intuition is both right and wrong. Ultimately, she's so disturbed by her visions that she tracks down the location of one -- a bar in a small town in Texas. Here she finds a farmhouse where a murder occurred and has a few close encounters, one with her ex-boyfriend Kurt (Adam Scott), who apparently followed her (and then tries to rape her).
Joanna's savior is predictably unlikely and gallant -- and brings his own baggage. Not only does Terry (Peter O'Brien) stop Kurt's assault, he also follows him into the street and beats him nearly senseless. Watching from her hotel room window, Joanna is intrigued.
The Return shifts back and forth, with Joanna positioned as both spectator and agent in her own story. You'll figure out the secret long before she does, and its basis -- a woman killed by a rural cretin -- is pretty stale.
But young British filmmaker Asif Kapadia (he made The Warrior in 2001, a remarkable meditation on violence and revenge) is doing something else here. The Return is more like a tone poem than a horror movie (contrary to its advertisements), and, as such, it's gorgeous, full of unexpected images and choices, of color (blue, gray) and framing (skewed, mobile, strange). Joanna's subjective journey doesn't end well, but the film doesn't shy away from the harrowing, lonely work of recovering from emotional trauma.
Families who like this movie might also want to see Gellar's earlier, revenge-themed scary movie, The Grudge, or the classic Hollywood noir Possessed (1947), starring Joan Crawford.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentOne scene shows sex as a flashback (blurry images, very close-up and inexplicit); one friendship involves a tender kiss but doesn't develop further because of the movie's focus on scary stuff. |
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ViolenceSeveral jump scenes; a young girl is stalked; protagonist cuts herself with knife twice; a car accident is shown repeatedly (the last version is the most violent, showing the crash itself); repated, sometimes abstract-seeming, bloody body parts; repeated versions of the same assault/central murder (a man hits, drags, kicks, then knifes his femlae victim, with bloody results and screaming); after another car accident, the protagonist's face and chest are bloodied; climactic struggle involves hitting, kicking; protagonist stabs villain with big knife; rape is threatened twice (first time is cut off quickly by another man; second leads to woman's murder). |
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LanguageSome ("god damn," "s--t" ). |
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Social BehaviorStereotypical villain (smalltown Texas local who's misogynist and brutal); the haunted protagonist receives little help from friends or family. |
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CommercialismCoca-Cola sign in the background; Pepsi can. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinking in a bar; brief drunken aggression. |
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